Street Fighter II Turbo

aka: Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Moby ID: 7083

SNES version

This is Street Fighter 2 in its purest, and most climactic incarnation.

The Good
Graphics, were incredible. I mean, the Mode7 floors, the numerous background layers, animation of moves, were all very professionally executed. Music was good, definitely not your regular Final Fantasy, but they were catchy, and kept the game moving. Sound Effects were good too, as far as synthesized speech goes on the SNES. Control...this is where it really shines. The various moves are just awesome, and the combinations utilized to execute them were very expertly designed. AI, was one of the virtues and vices of this game, as sometimes on one difficulty level say, Ryu for instance would act like a complete idiot, and then the next time he gets a straight, continuous 4-hit K.O. Without me even scoring a simple jab. Some of the combos performed by computer characters are just baffling in their brilliance. Also, I have played this game on various people's systems, and it seems that most versions will have you fight certain characters in a certain order, when you choose a certain character, but it varies from cartridge to cartridge, and that, I think is a true stroke of genius.

The Bad
As I said before the AI can be a real pain. Games are supposed to be at least a little difficult and require mastery, but what good is mastery when the move will work one time, (when you're losing) and other times not! (That's when you've beat 5 characters without dying once) Seriously, it seems like it reduces the human player's speed and ability to execute moves correctly when you are really tearing the computer players apart. Maybe I just get cocky sometimes, but, it does really seem like that sometimes.

The Bottom Line
The most refined version of Street Fighter 2, and really takes the cake of fighting games as a class. If you like fighting games, and you haven't played this, then shame on you.

by J. David Taylor (27) on November 20, 2003

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